


Heroes and Villains

by ellebb



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Betrayal, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Light Smut, Moral Ambiguity, Nuka-World, Open Season with a twist, fuck raiders, joining nuka-world as a minuteman, or /fuck/ raiders amirite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 22:57:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8508802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellebb/pseuds/ellebb
Summary: She's ex-Minutemen, and all fierce ambition.  She takes no shit and wants the Commonwealth back under her boot-heel.  Gage thinks she's the perfect Overboss.He shoulda known better.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I finally played Nuka-World. This is my headcannon garbage dump.
> 
> Also, there's some smut, but I don't think it qualifies for the E rating. So there's that.

“I shoulda known,” Gage sighed.

His busted lip was more than a busted lip; it crevassed and cragged over his swollen bottom lip down toward his chin.  That whole area would be one whole big bruise.  Ugly.  He wondered if corpses still bruised.

Evelyn reloaded her pistol, taking her time and running her black gloved fingers over each .44.

“Probably,” she agreed.

 The chamber filled, she cocked the hammer.

“As smart as you are, Gage,” Evelyn said, “You have a bad habit of making assumptions.  Optimistic.  Too optimistic.  You did it with Colter, and you did it with me.”

She lowered the revolver to her side, a single finger running over the side of the trigger.

“And even now, you’re still making assumptions.  About what’s coming next.”

-

How could he have known when she walked into Cola-Cars and riddled Colter’s stupid fucking face with brass?  Easy as you please, each shot hittin’ something tender.  Yeah, the Thirst Zapper was dumb as rocks, and funny as hell, but that aim of hers was mean and all business.  He couldn’t be blamed for getting hopeful.

Gage had shown her Fizztop Mountain and the patio, had watched as she grimaced at Colter’s interior decorating.  And then he gave her the lowdown on her new title.

“So I guess it’s true, then,” she said, lighting a cigarette.

“What’s true?” Gage asked.

“Heard Colter was daring anyone to knock him down if they could -- you need a new lure in the ‘Wealth,” she said. “The other one was chatty.”

Gage sighed, “That’s the third one this month.” 

She shrugged. “Any case, you really sure you want me?  You don’t even know who the fuck I am.”

He looked her up and down.  A military jumpsuit, two rifles, and a pretty face.  Nothing showy or green about her or the way she held herself, dark eyes taking in everything.  But also somehow clean of the wasteland and its scars and its terror and its utter debasement.  Clean of the intoxication that violence sometimes induced and was rampant among raiders.  Her boots were worn and dirty (they even still had Colter’s blood on ‘em), but somehow he imagined them clean.  Above it all.

“Well,” Gage said slowly. “I mighta heard you were running the Minutemen.  But they -- what do they call it?  Court-martialed you.  Kicked your ass out.  Something about chems.”

She cocked her head and smiled, all slow and pretty-like.

“Someone’s been doing their homework.  No full marks, though.  I was running a chem business.  The cooking, dealing, all of it.”

She sat at the bar and leaned back, tapping ashes into an empty bottle on the filthy countertop.

“About a month ago, a settlement got cocky about my benevolence,” she continued. “Thought they didn’t have to pay full price to my dealer.  Dealer goes back to get the other guys, and they rough up the settlers a little.  Maybe some blood was shed.  Maybe some farmer got killed.”

She shrugged.

“The Minutemen brass didn’t like it.  And then they found out I was skimming off the payroll.  So they took away my fancy coat and hat.”

Blowing smoke, she laughed.  Gage watched her eyes, upswept and arch, glitter like a beetle carapace.  Like night.

So that was it.  Caps.  Earlier Mags had hissed in his ear about the newest vic being the ex-General of the Minutemen.  Gage’d wondered what the ‘ex’ was about.  Everyone had a vice; might as well be money.  He just worried that she might favor the Operators as Overboss.  He’d have to ask Mags for more details later.

“So,” Gage said, low and musing. “You came to Nuka-World looking to kick Colter’s ass.  Why?”

She considered him.

“Why?”

“Bit of a jump.  Minuteman to raider.”

Dark lipstick stained her cigarette.

“I just lost an army,” she said. “And maybe I’m restless.  Maybe I wanna get back what’s fucking mine.”

“We talkin’ Commonwealth?”

“The one and only.”

And as Gage watched her smoke and smolder, he knew he had the right one.  Colter was just a trumped up thug; _this_ was his Overboss.

-

How could he have known, when she took to the gangs like a nukalurk to Nuka Quantum.

After their first meeting when she’d nearly gutted him with a hidden shiv, Mason wouldn’t shut up about how hot she was.  Mags and William got involved in the rebirth of her chem business.  And Nisha learned to toe the line when the Overboss shot a handful of Disciples for disrespect.  Didn’t shoot to kill; just in places that would hurt like a bitch (like a _mirelurk queen_ sort of bitch), and the only deliverance would be eating another bullet.

And she really convinced Gage himself when she started in on the other parks of Nuka-World.  She didn’t run through them like a dumbass; she took her time and scoped things out until she had a good idea of the lay of the land.  She was deliberate and directed him at her six with firm, experienced orders.  Even if she ran into Kiddie Kingdom screaming bloody murder, he’da been satisfied.  Getting Colter to see beyond his power armor had been like shoving a brahmin uphill.

Gage didn’t wonder about her past much anymore.  Mags told him how Boss had really gotten kicked out of the Minutemen about a month past; they’d even had a big ceremony and everything.  Everyone in the Commonwealth knew.   _And_ , Mags had added, there was some drama about Boss sleeping with her Colonel, and the Colonel not liking that he couldn’t keep the General to himself.

Gage didn’t ask Boss about this.  Personal business was personal.

But he definitely got where Mason was coming from when Boss saw the Nuka Girl outfit in Galactic Zone, laughed, and instantly took it for herself.

“Forgot about these,” she’d said.

He hadn’t understood at the time, and he probably shoulda known.  But the question flew out of his head, along with any sense he coulda claimed before, when her braless tits filled the “shirt,” and the “pants” clung to toned thighs and ass.  The white material was frankly obscene against a dark gold tan.  And that swagger was really something in those shiny black thigh-highs.

She was starting to really look the part.  The army green jumpsuit was gone, and she was looking more flashy, more like a raider.  Like an Overboss, a fucking symbol of Nuka-World.

So Gage didn’t ask about personal business.

He kept his questions to himself, but maybe if he let his eyes and thoughts wander -- well, it wasn’t like Boss wasn’t doing her own looking.  He always took point, and he wondered if her eyes would eventually burn a hole through his pants, right over his ass.  He found her prompting him to repeat things for no reason.  And then when Nisha whined about getting shafted when it came to the distribution of territory, Boss told her to go fuck herself and --

“Let Gage do your bitching for you from now on,” she’d said. “At least it’ll sound like butter then, and not a feral getting sodomized.”

“You sodomize ferals often, Boss?” Gage had asked dryly.

“Why, you wanna watch?”

Nisha stalked off in a huff, and he was left trying to find a way to dig out of this flirtatious hole he was in with Boss.  And found he really didn’t want to go anywhere.

-

They cleaned out three parks when Boss rolled out crates of Nuka Dark and declared it was time to party.

Raiders filled the streets of Nuka-Town, drunk and high and horny.  Shit was getting destroyed, fights spontaneously flaring, mini-wars between the gangs igniting, and straight-up orgies were rolling in the alleys.  Gage had set some guards at the entrance of Fizztop with strict instructions to remain sober, and he’d sent the lift up a long time ago.  He’d lost Boss sometime after her second drink.

He hated to admit it, but she knew what she was doing when she let these dumbasses celebrate.  It had been so long since they’d gotten new territory, they’d forgotten that it _was_ something to pop corks over.  Nuka-World needed to mark the event in their minds, and what better way was there than to lose their shit like this?  Sure, there’d be a fucking nightmare of a mess to clean up later, and the slaves (although strangely absent) would be reduced in number, but Gage knew this release was sometimes necessary.

But he couldn’t find Boss, and he needed to make sure she didn’t get shanked or something.

He entered Fizztop, the deafening roar and thunder of the party spilling into every crack and cranny of the building.  And when he got to the patio, he found her.  Fuck, did he find her.

She was laid out on her bed, smoking.  The boots were gone, and the white spandex pants were gone.  Her legs were long and lean, lines that rolled and hypnotized.  Unmarred, not pure, but perfect, because there is a difference -- what could those legs do?  The ass, too.  He’d seen the old-world pin-ups, the way some blue-balled artist painted rosy asscheeks in perfect globes, and those could never compare to what he stared at.

She looked up at him.

Realizing what he was doing, Gage turned on his heel to leave.

He muttered, “Sorry, Boss.  Didn’t realize--”

“Stop.”

Gage stopped.  He shouldn’t have.  He meant what he’d said, that he wanted to stay in the shadow of the person standing in the bullet’s path.  That he wanted to follow orders.  But this was the one order that he should have ignored.  He shoulda known.  Maybe he did know, but chose to stop anyway.

When he looked back up, she was staring him down and cocking the cigarette in her hand.

“Who said you could leave?” she asked.

“I, uh,” Gage said.

“What was that?”

“Sorry.  I didn’t see you for a while.  Those fucking idiots out there -- I got worried.”

Her hard eyes bore down on him.  The moment stretched, until she waved him over.

“Come closer,” Boss ordered.

Gage obeyed.  She reclined; that was the only word he could find for it: _reclined_ , not sprawled or spread on her bed.  And he couldn’t help but eat up her half-nakedness, the images his brain came up with of what he would touch and how and the sort of sounds and tastes he would coax.  She stared at him, and he couldn’t hide the heat that pooled in his dick, the growing boner.

“Lose the armor,” she ordered.

Gage obeyed.  The chipped yellow steel fell to the floor with loud thumps.  Boss sat up and tucked her legs, letting her knees spread a bit.  And he could really see between them now.  She let him look, smirking and daring him with her eyes.  This close he could tell she was a little drunk, and it would normally annoy him that she would ever make herself vulnerable or incapacitated.  But right now he was more uneasy, even a little terrified, of the low, dark thing in her gaze as she pinned him to the spot with not a single touch.  Just the ring of her voice and the sight of her flesh.

“You’re a fucking tease, Gage,” Boss said. “I’m getting sick of these eye-fuckings you give me.”

She put out the cigarette on the nightstand.  Leaning back onto the mattress, her hips canted up and revealed more of her.

“You get over here and do a good job?  I might even let you lick my tits.”

Gage obeyed.

At his first touch, he found someone else had been there earlier, and he couldn’t stop himself from glancing at her.  Her black curls tousled and wild, she gazed down at him between her legs.

“Wanna guess who it was?” she said lightly.

“No, Boss,” Gage said.

And that was the last thing he said for a while, his mouth otherwise preoccupied.

She was swollen and dark and sensitive.  Her body was its own nuclear reactor, galvanized by the press of her hips and her heat onto Gage’s tongue, the hold her ankles kept on the back of his head, pulling him deeper, deeper.  He kept pace and attempted precision as well as urgency.  And he managed it, despite being mesmerized by the undulations of her stomach and the straining of her stiff nipples against that white material.  He ignored the growing ache of his own need.

And she made good on her promise; she let him pull open that little excuse of a shirt and lap at the sweat between her breasts.  She sunk her nails into his scalp, just on the verge of painful.  When she tired of that, she pushed him off.

“Again,” Boss ordered.

Gage obeyed.

How many times was it, and how long did he spend there, entrapped by his own choice?  It was enough that she began shaking in his hands, and he grew bold enough to ignore her need for respite, and chased one peak after another.  She didn’t tell him off, so he kept on.  But the pain of his balls and his cock straining for any release, any friction, became too great and he tried to grind on the mattress without her notice.  But she saw anyway and smiled lazily down at him, giving no indication that she would allow him relief.  Finally, Gage got sloppy.

The foot she had planted on his shoulder kicked him away.  Startled, he slipped off the bed.

“That’s enough,” Boss heaved. “Now get the fuck out.”

Gage had no choice or will but to obey.

And he cursed her, wore her name out like a damn dog, while he leaned against the lobby wall of Fizztop and gave his cock the relief of his angry fist.  He cursed her, all the while imagining himself thrusting up into her, holding her down.  Having her order him harder, faster, come for me, Gage.

It did not take long for him to fall apart groaning, and he knew he would do it for her all over again.

-

In the following days, Gage often thought about that poor sonofabitch -- that Colonel whose company Gage now joined.  Following around this woman, getting squeezed by the weight of her heel and loving every second of it.  But he wouldn’t end up like that idiot; she wasn’t his to keep.  He would keep his nose to the grindstone and take what he could get.  Things were simpler that way.  They got their release and then moved on to more important matters.

Like claiming the entirety of Nuka-World.

Five districts wasn’t enough to spread evenly between three gangs, so Boss promised the Operators control of the power station once she secured it.  ‘It’s the better prize, anyway,’ was the line she soothed them with.  Whether that was true or not remained to be seen.

In the meantime, Gunners were causing problems on the outskirts of their territory, so Boss rounded up squads to squash the pseudo-military assholes.  Weeks passed, and the days seem to speed by.  Nula-World hadn’t seen this much action in over a year, and the raiders were forced to either brush up on their killing skills or die.  And Boss dangled the ultimate goal, the Commonwealth, before their noses to kick all their lazy asses into gear.  Add to that the ‘rewards’ she gave Gage, and he was riding high.

She finally let him fuck her when they got Nuka-World’s power back on.

She led him onto one of the carts of the carousel, waited until they were at the top and yelled down to the Pack member at the controls to turn it off.  Gage found himself dangling very, very high up in the air in a metal cart that swayed with the lightest of breezes.  The cart had no gate or door or glass covering its openings.

Despite himself, Gage began to sweat.

But Boss distracted him as she began to strip: right there, suspended over Kiddie Kingdom.

“Get us both ready,” she ordered.

Gage obeyed.

He discarded his armor, and slung her legs over his shoulders in a practiced maneuver.  But this time, praise Atom, this time he unbuckled his pants and worked himself while her thighs clenched around his head.

When she told him to stop he dropped back to the floor of the carousel cart, and she joined him there, pushing him back onto his ass.  And it was good: hot and sweaty and slick and rough.  Boss rode him, controlling his body with the weight and the rise of her own.  With the smell of flesh and fluid, and with her nails dragging up his back.

Their fucking was making the cart sway more in the air, and Gage’s heat-filled head had interspersed bursts of terrifying vertigo.  The ground was very far away, yet cresting and falling with every shudder of this tin can in the sky.

Looking back, he supposed that had been appropriate.  Boss was a mixture of the terrifying and the exhilarating, the gratifying and the devouring.  He shoulda known that she would cost him.

-

Gage gazed out into Kiddie Kingdom from the doorway of a plastic gingerbread house.  All of Nuka-World was here tonight; the Pack was hosting in their territory because the Overboss wanted to use King Cola’s castle to make an announcement.  The day had finally come to conquer the Commonwealth.  Boss would be assigning tasks to the different gangs, and needed them all gathered to get everyone on the same page.  Already a bunch of ‘em were bitching and moaning about what choice slice of the ‘Wealth they’d be getting.

She’d told Gage to wait for her in the gingerbread house before the announcement.  Had something to say to him.  So here he sat, watching as the last stragglers entered the park.  He was starting to get antsy when several things happened at once.

The spray installation that Boss had disabled turned on, the spouts spread throughout the park clicking in a staccato rhythm.   Gage flinched when a gentle spray hit his face.  Instinctively, he drew his rifle and sprinted for the gates, only a few paces away.

The gates swung shut with a bang like an iron battering ram.  The sound echoed as the other gates to Kiddie Kingdom snapped shut, too.

Gage dropped to a defensive position, edging back to the nearest cover and his eye raking over his surroundings.  He tried to hold his breath and avoid the spray, but he could already feel a chemical change in his body.  His limbs were heavy and his fingers were numb.  He told himself to stay alert and reached for the emergency chems he kept in his pack.

But Gage whirled when he sensed someone behind him -- and had his face cracked open with a hard, blunt object he would later learn was the butt of a laser musket.

As he fell to the ground and the blunt object kept bludgeoning him, Gage thought he heard rain in the distance.

-

It was not rain.

It was the sound of what would later be known as the Kiddie Kingdom Massacre, in the following decades when interest sprung up about the origins of the Minutemen and their first years in power.

The sound Gage heard as he was beaten spilled from the interior of King Cola’s Castle: a dozen miniguns mounted in the upper stories of the theater were suddenly uncovered and fired into the audience below.  The vast majority of the Pack, the Operators, and the Disciples were packed into the relatively small theater.  The raiders had already been jostling with each other, standing shoulder to shoulder and deeply regretting any bets made on who could go the longest without bathing.

As the miniguns ate up long ribbons of round, the raiders of Nuka-World were slaughtered like brahmin.

Mass panic rose up like a terrible counter-melody to the sound of the machine guns.  Some attempted to escape, clawing and beating their way through the horde, but found the doors chained shut, just like the doors to backstage.  Some attempted to hunker underneath corpses and fire off potshots at their attackers.  If a minigun didn’t take care of them, then a better placed laser or grenade eviscerated the raiders.

It was over in a matter of minutes.

-

The scene Gage woke to was some of the worst shit he’d ever witnessed.

Mountains of corpses filled the audience of King Cola’s Theater.  Hundreds of bodies piled on top of one anothers, the gangs as indistinguishable as they had never been in life.  The flesh was mangled and ripped, shredded.  Blood and red viscera had crawled high up the theater’s walls.  The floor swam with it.  The stage Gage slumped on, gagged and bound, was like an island sitting in a moat of carnage.  The smell of wet iron and fecal matter brought his gorge up.

“Last one’s awake, General,” someone close by shouted.

Gage looked around.  To the sides were bound gang members -- nobodies that probably should be down there in the audience.  At the front, the gang leaders kneeled on the stage with him: Mason, Mags and William, Nisha.  And their lieutenants, too.  Lizzie, Savoy and Dixie.  They also sprouted signs of beatings; busted heads and dazed eyes.  That might be whatever that chem spray had been, too.  They’d all been gagged and bound, and chained to one another besides.  Some of them glared at Gage, some at their captors around them.

The men and women standing with drilled discipline around the raiders had their crackling laser muskets and pistols trained on the prisoners.  They wore blue uniforms, some with gold decorations and bigger hats.  They all wore hard, dispassionate expressions as they stared at the raiders, a crack from a musket butt stopping any funny business.

“About time,” said the voice Gage did not want to hear.

Yes, she wasn’t bound with the rest of them.  Yes, she was the one to lure him out alone.  Yes, she was the one that had corralled most of Nuka-World into this theater.

Still.

Gage had hoped she had run or something.  Was about to break them out in a daring rescue.  Got killed in the first attack, anything.

He shoulda known.

Boss emerged from backstage.  Dark blood was drying on her black boots.  She stood, and met each and every glare the gang leaders gave her.  When Nisha leaped forward, jerking the rest of them and spitting behind her gag, Boss just watched as some flunky pistol-whipped her back into line.

Boss turned to a group of Minutemen spilling out behind her from backstage.

“Where’s my coat and hat?” she asked.

“Here,” said a private.  He held out a neatly folded bundle with a great, fancy fucking tricorn sitting on top.

And Boss took the hat, dropped it on her black curls like she’d done it a million times before, and let the private help her into the navy coat, decorated with the most gold and buckles out of the whole lot.  The coat fluttered and wrapped around her like an old friend.  And Boss wasn’t Boss anymore.  Just like that.

“Good to have you back, General,” said the second-fanciest coat.  The Colonel that, then.

Evelyn smiled thinly and took the revolver her second-in-command held out to her.

“Good to be back, Garvey,” the General said.

The crowd of Minutemen not guarding the raiders stepped back as Evelyn took center stage.  She moved easily, slowly, her coat flaring with each movement. She checked the rounds in her gun, and rolled the chamber back in.  Holding the revolver to her side, she considered them again.  She finally met Gage’s gaze; she hadn’t been avoiding it, he knew.  She just didn’t give a shit.  Whatever she saw in his face, she met with cool impassivity.

The General gazed past him, up into the gallery.

“Are the residents of Nuka-World assembled?” she asked in a carrying volume, with formal intonation.

Gage and the other raiders crooked their heads to stare over their shoulders.  Between the gaps of their guards, he could see the enslaved traders lining the gallery where the dozen miniguns sat.

“We are,” MacKenzie Bridgeman called back.

“Do the residents of Nuka-World wish to join the Minutemen?” Evelyn asked.

“We do.”

“Do the residents of Nuka-World swear to uphold the tenets of the Minutemen and make every effort to protect and nurture their neighbors and friends?”

“We do.”

“Do the residents of Nuka-World wish to entrust the act of justice upon these raiders to the assembled Minutemen?”

“We do,” MacKenzie finished with a hard set to her face.

Mags snorted, turning her back on the traders.

The General turned her gaze back down to her prisoners.  She ran a finger over the gun at her side.

“First of all,” Evelyn began, “I want to make some things clear.”

She strode slowly toward Gage and the others.

“I fucked you all over,” the General said grimly, waving toward the slaughter behind them. “I won.  You lost.”

Beside Gage, Mason groaned or roared or something.  And there was some sound outside like rushing, cutting air in the distance.

Evelyn nodded. “That’s right.  Now, secondly.  The sentries that didn’t come to the announcement have already been killed by plants among the gangs and traders.  Anyone who skivved is getting flushed out.  And that--”

She pointed upward toward the noise growing outside.  It roared overhead and was gone in a flash.

“That is my vertibird hunting down anyone who might have run for the hills.”

She walked toward the end of the line of chained raiders, right in front of Savoy.

“I didn’t want anyone dying with false hope,” said the General.

She nodded at the guard behind Savoy.  A long stick with a loop of rope at the end was used to pull the man’s head up.  He glared at the Minuteman General.  She cocked the hammer.

The shot rang in the theater, even with the walls soaked with blood.  Two shots for Nisha and Dixie, and the chain sagged with the weight of their bodies.  Then Mags, William, and Mason died, leaving Gage last and all the rounds in the revolver spent.

Evelyn stopped in front of him, her bloody black boots only a pace away from his knees.  He looked up into her face.  And he hated how beautiful he still thought her.  Even a backstabbing bitch that she was.  Even with that cold and unfeeling gaze.

The General said, “Ungag this one.  And I need more rounds.”

-

“Was any of it true?” Gage asked wearily, not even knowing himself what exactly he meant.

“No,” said Evelyn. “We made a lot of noise about me leaving the Minutemen, but it was all lies.  Gonna be a little difficult getting the Commonwealth used to me again, but that’s how it goes.”

She shrugged and continued, “We planted the lies about the embezzlement.  And the drama with Garvey over there, too.  Which I’m surprised you never asked me about.”

Gage shook his head.

“What happens now?” he asked.

“Now, you have a choice.  As do all of you.”

She waved at the other raider prisoners at the side of the stage.

“If you are not dead yet,” the General continued,”It’s because I saw some glimmer of hope in your redemption or I believe you useful.  But your life comes with a price.  If you want to live, you’ll be outfitted with a bomb collar and sentenced to ten years hard labor.  Or I shoot you here and now.  It’s a clean death, and you can keep your raider pride or whatever.”

The theater was quiet.  Some of the Minutemen rolled their eyes, and some of the raiders looked at each other uneasily.  Gage stared at the General.

“And what about me?  Why give me the choice?” he asked.

She looked him in the eye. “Because I think you’re a useful man, Gage.  I can forgive an ex-raider.  But.  I cannot forgive anyone that preys on good people trying to earn an honest living.  That’s scum of the earth.”

She kneeled down on her heels, dangling the revolver casually between her knees.  She stared him down.

“ _You_ are scum of the earth, Gage.  Unless you take this chance here and now, and change.  Do not think my fondness for you will prevent me from putting a bullet between your eyes.”

She tilted her head.

“Because _I’m_ not good people living honestly.  I just protect them.”

And then when Gage answered her, and he watched that shiny object of his fate coming toward him -- he did not know if he’d chosen right.


End file.
